


Conspiracy

by phoenixnz



Category: NCIS
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-18 15:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4710476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixnz/pseuds/phoenixnz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A marine gunnery sergeant is murdered on a street in DC in the middle of the night. The only connection is a woman he called right before his death. Gibbs and the gang must figure out the connection before someone guns her down too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic for NCIS that isn't a crossover or an episode related, but it is episodal in that it could fit within show canon. External relationships are implied but the characters are only mentioned in passing or get a brief cameo.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A gunnery sergeant is murdered. Gibbs and crew check out the scene and investigate a woman he called right before he was killed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beautiful cover by ctbn60

The man was tall and lanky with long legs in faded blue denim. He stood almost in the middle of the street with a stiff posture, yet his face betrayed worry. He had a cellphone in one hand, held up to his ear as he kept turning his head, clearly looking for someone in the darkness.

He paced up and down the street, waiting.

“Where are you?” he spoke into the phone. “You were supposed to be here an hour ago. Look, call me back as soon as you get this message.”

In frustration, he ran a hand through his short hair before disconnecting the call and shoved the cellphone in his pocket, turning to walk toward a four door sedan parked a few feet away. Suddenly there was a loud crack and he collapsed to his knees before falling face down. He didn’t move again.

oo0oo

Agent Ellie Bishop groaned as her phone went off and rolled out of bed.

“Bishop,” she said sleepily.

“Dead marine,” Gibbs’ gruff voice said. “Seventh and K Streets.” With that he hung up.

Bishop groaned again. “Doesn’t anyone just call to talk anymore?” she grumbled. Jake muttered in his sleep. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Five in the morning. It was still dark out, considering it was early spring.

Yawning, she grabbed her clothes, donning the gear the agency expected, or rather Gibbs expected, all the agents to wear out in the field when they were investigating a crime scene. Without exception.

McGee and Dinozzo were equally bleary-eyed as they arrived at the scene. McGee was yawning as he grabbed his duffel bag, pulling out the crime scene camera. Dinozzo was blinking, clearly trying to focus his vision.

“Maybe I’m getting old,” Dinozzo was complaining. “Do I have wrinkles around my eyes?”

“We’re all getting old,” McGee told him. “Deal with it.”

“Except Bishop,” Dinozzo remarked. “She at least looks bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for five in the a.m, hey probie?”

Bishop snorted at the senior agent but didn’t reply. Gibbs was talking with a Metro PD officer. Ducky and Jimmy were already examining the body sprawled face down on the road beside a blue Ford Taurus. Bishop looked around then started canvassing the people gathered, watching the scene. What they were doing up at five-thirty in the morning was anyone’s guess, but she supposed it was like those who couldn’t help hanging around after an accident just to see what had happened.

Dinozzo went to talk to Ducky while McGee began taking photos of the scene. S.O.P.

It took roughly two hours to clear the scene. By then Bishop’s stomach was complaining, as was McGee’s. Dinozzo had clearly stopped for coffee and pastries as he brought in a tray and a box, setting it on his desk, then handed it out.

Normally he would make some smart aleck remark but Bishop wondered if his girlfriend had mellowed him or something. Then she snorted. Yeah, right. This was Tony Dinozzo she was talking about.

McGee rose from his desk as Gibbs walked in.

“Go!”

“Victim was Gunnery Sergeant Dan Watson. He spent the last six months in rehab at Bethesda after he was injured in an explosion in Iraq. I’m still trying to track down the records for that. Uh, he wasn’t married, no children. Parents live in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I called them and they’re on their way down. They’ll be here probably around noon, give or take.”

“Cellphone records?” Gibbs barked. Bishop glanced at Dinozzo, cocking an eyebrow. Gibbs was off to a great start this morning.

“Right before he was killed he made several calls to the same number,” McGee said. “I managed to access the voicemail record for the number and this was the final message.”

_“Where are you? You were supposed to be here an hour ago. Look, call me back as soon as you get this message.”_

Tim looked at their team leader.

“Uh, the number belongs to a Chris Richards.”

“Address?”

“About twenty minutes from downtown Baltimore.”

Gibbs nodded. He looked at Bishop and Dinozzo who were both standing around looking like idiots.

“Get to work,” he said. “McGee, you’re with me.”

“Yes sir, boss.”

McGee continued to work on his laptop, trying to access records as Gibbs drove to the address in Baltimore.

“Uh, Chris Richards, forty-one, lives alone. No priors, two speeding tickets, but both immediately paid.”

“What’s the connection to the victim?”

“No idea. I guess that’s what we’ll have to ask her.”

“Her?” Gibbs asked. McGee hadn’t said anything about it being a woman. He thought back. No. Nothing at all mentioned.

The street was empty of cars. Gibbs guessed most of the residents were at work. It was after nine, so they were pretty much taking a chance she would be home.

The house they stopped outside had a small front yard but it was neat. The porch was empty of furniture. Not even flowers grew at the front. Either this Chris Richards was not green-thumbed or just didn’t have time for it.

McGee ascended the porch first and knocked on the door. There was the scrape of furniture and someone called out.

“Just a minute!”

About a minute later the front door opened but was clearly on a chain as there was only a narrow gap between the door and the frame. An attractive brunette looked out at them.

“Yes?”

Gibbs took out his identification badge and showed it to her.

“NCIS. Are you Chris Richards?”

She frowned. “NCIS?”

“Naval Criminal Investigative Service,” McGee told her. She scowled at him.

“I know what it means! What I want to know is, what would NCIS want with me?”

Gibbs tried for a smile, hoping to calm the situation before she turned hostile. Clearly she was upset about something.

“May we come in?” he asked.

“Can I see that badge again?” she asked, reaching her hand out for it.

Gibbs handed it over without a murmur. She gazed at it, then looked up at him, then back down to the badge.

“All right,” she said, handing it back to him. She closed the door to remove the chain and let them in.

As she turned away from the door, Gibbs noticed she walked with a pronounced limp. She must have sensed his stare as she turned and looked at him.

“A bomb,” she said. “Got a huge chunk taken out of my leg.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’m alive, thanks to a friend of mine.”

“This friend ... wouldn’t happen to be a marine, would he?”

She blinked at him, her gaze assessing. At least, it was from one eye. The other eye was bloodshot and badly bruised. Gibbs noticed a wet towel on the table as she led them through the living room to the small kitchen and dining area.

“That’s a nasty black eye,” McGee commented.

“Yeah, I was mugged last night. Let me tell you, never take self-defence advice from Sandra Bullock.”

McGee looked confused. “Sandra Bullock? The actress?”

“Haven’t you seen the movie? Miss Congeniality? SING?”

McGee shook his head. Gibbs frowned at her. He didn’t know the movie either, but then he never watched movies.

“I spent half the night at the hospital,” she said. “Fractured eye socket. Lost my wallet and my cellphone. Lucky for me my neighbour has a spare key and keeps an eye on the place for me when I’m not here.”

“So you wouldn’t have been anywhere near DC at three am this morning?” McGee asked.

She frowned at him. “First no, and three am this morning? That’s redundant.”

“Excuse me?”

“You either say three am or three this morning. Don’t say both. It’s redundant. I was an English major, a million years ago when I went to college.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Why the interest?”

“Do you know Daniel Watson?” Gibbs asked.

She nodded. “He’s a good friend of mine. We sort of bonded in the hospital. Well, before that really. Why?”

Gibbs didn’t want to break the news to her, but she was going to hear about it sooner or later. As soon as it hit the news.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but Daniel was killed this morning. Shot.”

Her face drained of colour. Her hand shook as she lifted it to her face.

“What?” she asked quietly. “H-how … why? How did … I …”

She was clearly shaken. Gibbs felt genuine sympathy for the younger woman. She seemed to have liked the dead man a lot.

McGee pulled out a chair for her and made her sit down.

“Let me get you some water,” he said gently.

Gibbs sat next to her. He would normally have had her brought in, taken to the conference room, but with her injury she was in no shape to go anywhere.

“Do you have any idea if Daniel had any enemies?” he asked.

She looked at him, biting her lip. From her hesitation, he guessed she might know something, but was reluctant to say anything. He decided not to pursue it. Not yet.

McGee handed her the water. She sipped it, her hand still trembling.

“Were you and Daniel seeing each other?”

She choked, looking surprised. “Seeing each other? Dating? What would make you think that?”

“He made several calls to your cellphone before he was killed.”

“We did have plans to meet up, to catch up, but no, we weren’t dating.”

“Why not?” Gibbs asked. Daniel was a few years younger than her, but she was an attractive woman.

“Daniel wouldn’t have been interested in me,” she said. “I mean, he was a sweet guy and we could tell each other anything, but … I mean, he was like my best friend. I can’t believe … I can’t believe he’s dead.”

Gibbs nodded. “Why don’t you get some rest?” he suggested.

They left her still sitting at the table. As Gibbs closed the front door gently he heard the sound of sobs.

McGee was quiet until they got to the car.

“She was hiding something,” he said.

Gibbs nodded. “Find out about this mugging.”

“See if it’s related to Daniel’s death?” McGee replied. “On it.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ducky explains the results of the autopsy and Abby relays what her tests have uncovered.

Ducky was at work as usual, finishing up the autopsy on the body of the dead marine. 

“Rather a lot of scarring young man,” he said, bending over the man’s naked body. The front of the chest had been sewn up after the usual ‘Y’ incision. Palmer had weighed the organs as per usual procedure.

Normally Donald Mallard, affectionately known as Ducky among his colleagues, didn’t mind the company of young Jimmy Palmer, although his way of going off on different tangents was an occasional source of irritation. Ducky wasn’t so full of himself that he didn’t realise that Palmer was just trying to emulate him in some way. Even as a student at Edinburgh University, Ducky had been known for his occasional forays into trivial pursuits. 

He liked to pretend that the makers of the game had got the idea after meeting him, although he couldn’t actually recall having met a Chris Haney or a Scott Abbott in his long, illustrious career. 

Aged possibly in his seventies, or even older, Ducky was a man of average height, with short brown hair. When he wasn’t in his scrubs, performing autopsies, he would be dressed rather conservatively in a business suit and bowtie. If he had done a psychological profile on himself, Ducky would suggest that his preference for such harked back to the days when men tended to dress more formally, even at university. He was very much old school.

The Scottish-born doctor had lost count of how many years he’d been the medical examiner for NCIS. He had taken over the position when Walter Magnus had retired. Dr Magnus had since been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Fortunately for Ducky, that was a fate that hadn’t befallen him, although, given his predilection to ramble or go off on different tangents with one story or another, it would be little surprise if some of those who came across him in the course of a case made such assumptions. 

Ducky rambled on as he ran through his usual checks, chuckling with the knowledge and thankfulness that the boy on the table couldn’t actually hear him. Or if he did it would be as a spirit of some kind. 

Ducky did sometimes wonder if it was true that the spirits of the recently departed did linger for at least a little while, especially if they had unfinished business. Dear lord, he thought, if his mother had decided to hang around …

He had once had this particular discussion with an old friend and a colleague. His friend, a deeply religious fellow, had come out firmly in favour of the spirit immediately being sent to the pearly gates, therefore to await his judgment. His colleague, however, had postulated a rather interesting theory that ghosts and spirits were merely just imprints of the past, rather like the grooves on a vinyl record, or as young Tim McGee would suggest, a bit of data on a computer that one would access. 

“Talking to yourself Duck?” 

Ducky straightened up and turned, raising an eyebrow at Jethro Gibbs. They had been through thick and thin together in the past few years. Gibbs was well aware of Ducky’s penchant for talking to his ‘patients’ as if they could talk back. 

“What do you got?” Gibbs asked in that clipped way of his that suggested he knew it wasn’t grammatically correct but he couldn’t care less. 

“Well, this young man has, as they say, been through the wringer. He has extensive scarring on his back and what appear to be second and third degree burns.”

“Anything else?”

“Of course, the cause of death is fairly obvious. I had Palmer take the bullet down to Abby for testing.” The bullet had been found lodged in a vehicle about fifty metres from the body.

He stepped over to the screens to show Gibbs the scans. The bullet had pretty much made mincemeat out of the victim’s skull, entering through the back of the neck, just below the occipital lobe and out through the chest. It was not a pleasant way to die. 

Ducky explained that based on the angle, the shooter had been either taller than the victim or had been shooting from higher up. Abby would be able to calculate the trajectory better, but Ducky assumed what he had seen of the crime scene himself, the killer had been in one of the surrounding buildings. 

“Sniper,” Gibbs murmured.

“Yes, that was my summation as well,” Ducky agreed. 

Psychologically speaking, he added, a killer didn’t usually use this method unless there was some kind of point to make. He still remembered when Ari had shot Caitlin Todd. The method and the weapon used had been done so to send a message to Gibbs and Gibbs alone.

This one had all the makings of a professional hit. 

oo0oo

Abby had already put the bullet through the usual tests although it looked pretty bad, having been dug out the metal body of a car. Still, that was where she came in. Abby didn’t have the reputation for being a genius for nothing.

She was working on the computer, looking at a simulation of the scene on the monitor, trying to place the victim with the shooter. Loud rock music was playing in the background as usual.

Abby Sciuto was one of those people who looked to be a walking contradiction. From her dyed black hair, which she usually tied up in pigtails, to the dark eyeliner and black lipstick, the black t-shirt and four-inch platform heels on her knee-high boots, not to mention the spider-web tattoo on her neck and the dog collar, she met all the characteristic prerequisites of what most people believed were Goths.

Yet for all that, she was generally a happy-go-lucky woman who loved her job as a forensic scientist. She was an expert in anything from ballistics to computers and approached her duties with all the enthusiasm and excitement of a child opening presents at Christmas. 

That wasn’t to say that she didn’t have her moments. There had been the night that Kate had died, the day the building was bombed, the day she learned that Ziva wasn’t coming back. Ziva David had taken a little getting used to, but Abby still considered her as close to her as she would family. 

She still got an email from the former Israeli agent every so often. Ziva would tell her what she was doing. She had gone back to Israel to stay, at least for a little while, although she was doing her best to avoid running into any of her former Mossad colleagues, not wanting to stir up bad memories.

“Abs …”

She looked around, realising she had become so absorbed in what she was doing that she hadn’t heard Gibbs sneaking in. That was a first, she thought. She always seemed to have a sixth sense when the major case response team leader came into her lab.

“Gibbs,” she said, putting on a sunny smile. 

She crossed the lab to pick up the print-out.

“So, I already analysed the bullet they pulled out of the car. It was pretty mangled, but my best guess is it came from this,” she said, returning to her computer and bringing up a weapon on the screen.

“The 98 Bravo,” Gibbs said, displaying that superior knowledge he had of all things military.

“Yup.”

She glanced at him. Gibbs looked tired today. Then again, he usually did. For such a handsome man, she couldn’t help but think it was a shame that he didn’t have anyone to turn to. Other than them, of course. It was pretty much a given that he thought of them all as his family.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs was career military. He still had his silver hair cut in the marine style, even though it had been over twenty years since he’d been discharged in order to work for NCIS, although in those days it had just been called NIS. 

Abby considered the man to be as close to her as a father, or a favourite uncle, but even they had had their clashes from time to time. There had been the time Abby had been asked to go down to Mexico to teach a class on forensics. She had been given a cold case to work on and had discovered the case was a Pedro Hernandez, who she later discovered had been murdered by Gibbs. Abby hadn’t wanted to turn in her report, knowing what would happen. It had made for a difficult few days in which the case had gnawed at her conscience.

Pedro Hernandez had been ordered to kill an NIS agent, who had been driving Gibbs’ wife and young daughter at the time. They had both died, leaving Gibbs completely devastated. While he had married three more times after their deaths, none of the women could ever replace the family he had lost.

“Ah, so, the 98 Bravo is a bolt-action sniper rifle and uses .338 Lapua. It’s only been out since October 2008.” 

“It’s definitely the murder weapon?” Gibbs asked.

She nodded. “It matches.” She glanced at the other monitor. “I’ve been analysing the scene and from what I can tell, the sniper was shooting from this hotel.” She gave him the room number. Gibbs would most likely have to get a warrant to be able to go over the room, although chances were housekeeping would have got there first. Unless they were lucky enough and the shooter had left a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door. 

Gibbs kissed her on the cheek, then frowned.

“You all right?” he asked. “You seem distracted.”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” she replied. 

He shrugged and left, his usual ‘Thanks Abs’ called on his way out the door.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bishop and DiNozzo check out the crime scene and Gibbs and McGee meet with the marine's parents.

Standard operating procedure in a homicide was to canvass the area and learn if there were any witnesses. Three o’clock in the morning, most of the downtown area of DC was generally quiet, but that didn’t mean no one had seen anything.

Abby’s analysis had given Bishop and DiNozzo a place to start and they had duly visited the Langdon Hotel, telling the desk clerk they needed to speak with the manager. It was eleven or close enough to it, and most hotels had checkout times around then.

DiNozzo flashed his badge at the manager and told him they needed to search a room. The manager was uneasy about letting them into the room but he had heard about the murder and was equally uneasy about the fact that someone had used their hotel in the commission of a crime. While the Langdon wasn’t exactly five-star accommodation, it wasn’t a cheap hotel either. The manager explained they had certain policies they had to follow.

“We could get a warrant,” DiNozzo said coolly. Bishop observed him in action as he spoke to the manager. His tone was unthreatening. Not quite casual, but certainly not in the smart aleck way he was known for.

Those who knew him best would say that DiNozzo had matured somewhat in the years he’d been with NCIS. Whether it was the fact that he was a senior agent, second in command to Gibbs, it was hard to say. Certainly there were fewer pranks and he seemed to be more serious about his work. Bishop had only known him a couple of years at best but she had heard the stories.

Tony DiNozzo, junior, was in his early forties. A good-looking man with dark blonde hair, he had a smile that was charming when he wanted to be, yet deadly when he was pissed off. Bishop had never been all that good at reading people, but she often thought DiNozzo considered Gibbs to be much more than a mentor. While Tony had a good relationship with his father, Anthony DiNozzo senior, it hadn’t always been so from what she had heard, and the senior agent had looked to Gibbs to fill that role, albeit unconsciously.

She wouldn’t have called DiNozzo movie star handsome, but he did have a certain quality that was attractive. Unfortunately, he also knew that and used it to considerable advantage. While he was definitely more ‘mature’ he still flirted like he thought he was God’s gift.

Bishop had joined NCIS long after Ziva David had left. When she’d first started on a joint duty assignment with the NSA, Bishop had heard enough about the former Israeli to know that she was quite the legend. Ziva had been tough, uncompromising and definitely did not suffer fools gladly, although she apparently did mangle her idioms frequently, a failing of her education in English, Bishop supposed.

She had been daunted, in the beginning, at the thought of trying to live up to Ziva’s reputation. Just because Bishop had been raised in Oklahoma, with three brothers, and could rough and tumble with the best of them, it didn’t mean she was as ‘badass’ as Ziva apparently was.

She’d realised a long time ago that she didn’t have to be. She had been trained initially as an analyst and that was her greatest strength. So she wasn’t raised in a country torn apart by war. She wasn’t trained to be a killer. That didn’t mean she didn’t have something else to bring to the table.

“Probie. You coming?”

The blonde joined DiNozzo, who had apparently managed to talk the senior hotel staffer into letting them into the room. She walked with him to the elevator which they took to the fifth floor.

It irritated her a little that she was still called Probie, especially after she’d been an agent for nearly two years. McGee had tried to explain that it was not just a reminder of her status, but a little like a hazing, although not in a mean-spirited way. He’d told her that Gibbs’ mentor, Mike Franks, had called him ‘Probie’ long after he’d retired. Bishop supposed it was the other agents’ way of welcoming new agents, but it still irked sometimes.

The housekeeper called in by the manager opened the door. She was a woman in her fifties with what sounded to Bishop like a New England accent. Bishop noticed the wedding ring on her left hand. It looked dull enough to have been on her finger a long time.

DiNozzo stood in the doorway, looking impatient. As Bishop moved to enter the room, she noticed the ‘Do not Disturb’ sign on the door handle. Further observations told her that whoever had hired the room had done so not with the intention of using the room for sleeping in. They’d clearly used it for the purpose of killing Daniel Watson.

“I’ll start in the bathroom,” she said, putting on latex gloves. The housekeeper left them to it.

Bishop began searching the bathroom but as she suspected from her initial glance, there was nothing to find. She would have assumed the person who had used the room would have used the bathroom, but even that was clean.

Ducky had suggested this might have been a professional hit. It certainly had all the signs, she sighed as DiNozzo appeared in the doorway.

“Nothing,” she told him.

“Me either. Let’s talk to the manager.”

She nodded and followed the senior agent back downstairs. The manager did not look happy to see them so soon but was at least prepared to be co-operative. He gave them the name of the person who had taken the room and their credit card info. Long gone were the days when someone could pay cash upfront for a room, unless of course it was one of those cheap hotels that still accepted that.

The Langdon might not be five-star rated, but it was still part of a corporate chain and they had certain rules they had to follow.

Not that the credit card information was going to do them any good either, Bishop realised. If the shooter was a pro, and judging from the state of the room he was, the card was going to be either stolen or a fake.

The manager did have something promising though. The hotel had recently installed new security systems. The manager explained that they’d had an incident where a guest had assaulted a night clerk because the clerk had refused to break policy just to give them what they were demanding.

They had noted the time the guest had checked in and they had video. Bishop asked for the file and the manager promised to send it for McGee to look at.

oo0oo

Gibbs dreaded the family conversations. The ones that always started with: “I’m very sorry for your loss”.

Well, what else could you say? he grumbled to himself.

McGee had accompanied him to the conference room where one of the other agents had escorted Mr and Mrs Jack and Belinda Watson. The couple had driven down from Connecticut.

The couple were clearly upset, but composed. They’d had time to come to terms with their son’s death.

Belinda was a slim woman in her early sixties. She clearly took good care of herself as she looked younger than her age, her naturally pale complexion almost wrinkle-free. She had probably dyed her strawberry blonde hair when she was younger but she had started to let it grey naturally and the colour was very becoming. She reminded Gibbs a little of Sam Ryan, his former girlfriend and head of the Psy-Ops division.

Jack was also aged in his early sixties with an athletic build. Gibbs assumed the man played sport of some kind. His hair was cut in a very similar style to Gibbs, which suggested he had a military background himself.

Jack held out his hand and Gibbs took it. The handshake was firm without being bone-crushing, yet showed the other man was reasonably strong.

“Agent Gibbs,” he said. Clearly someone had already told the couple who he was. Jack tried for a pleasant smile. “Forgive me. I looked up your information before we arrived.”

“I see.”

“I just like to know who I’m dealing with.”

Belinda looked at her husband. “Darling, please, don’t rile the man.” She half-smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, Agent Gibbs. My husband’s curiosity sometimes gets the best of him.”

She shot her husband an affectionate if somewhat exasperated glance and he sat down.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” McGee said, saving Gibbs the trouble.

Gibbs glanced at Tim McGee. Like DiNozzo, he valued the younger man’s various strengths, although his tendency to ramble rather than stick to the point was exasperating at times. Gibbs had little patience for computers, but he was glad for McGee’s expertise in this area, particularly in the advent of increasing cyber crime.

Not that he would ever actually tell McGee this. Jethro Gibbs was a man of few words who preferred straight-talking. He supposed part of it was his service as a marine. Shannon had often laughed at him for it.

“I was a Marine too,” Jack was saying. “I was stationed in the Gulf around 90, 91. Had to bury a few friends. That … you kind of expect it, you know what I mean, Gibbs?”

Gibbs nodded. He did.

“But this … this …”

“Did Daniel have any enemies that you can recall?” McGee asked.

Mrs Watson shook her head. “Danny was just the sweetest boy. He always made sure to call me on my birthday and on special occasions. He didn’t have a hateful bone in his body. I don’t know why anyone would hate him enough to hurt him like this.”

“We understand he spent six months in rehab in Bethesda,” Gibbs replied. “Over an incident in Afghanistan.”

The couple nodded. Jack explained.

“There was a bomb. We’re not exactly sure what happened. All that we know is he saved the life of a friend and a young boy.”

“The friend wouldn’t be Chris Richards, would it?”

Belinda nodded. “He was sweet on her. We met her once but I don’t think she was ever aware that Danny had feelings for her. Such a lovely young lady.”

“So they weren’t dating?” McGee asked.

“No, not that we know of,” Jack told them. “Chris seemed kind of shy but I think that’s what drew Danny to her. Our son was a little shy himself.”

“They did have a lot in common.”

Gibbs nodded. That was the impression he had had when he had read Daniel’s personnel file. His commanding officer had remarked on Daniel’s reticence, but noted he was still a good marine.

As the couple went downstairs to talk to Ducky, Gibbs looked at McGee.

“I’ll bring her in,” McGee said.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McGee brings Chris in to headquarters

Timothy McGee had been an agent long enough that he knew the drill when it came to his boss. Jethro Gibbs didn’t suffer fools gladly and he hated being lied to even more. In the nearly twelve years Tim had been with the Major Case Response Team at NCIS headquarters, he had seen his boss intimidate the toughest, meanest son of a bitch on the face of the Earth into crying like a baby. 

Gibbs sometimes reminded Tim of his own father, who had been taciturn at best. Tim’s relationship with the late Admiral McGee had been difficult. They had barely spoken for some years until he’d learned his father had been terminally ill with cancer. His death had been gut-wrenching.

When McGee had first started working with the unit, he’d been intimidated by Gibbs, unsure of himself, which had led to clashes with the older agent. It hadn’t helped that DiNozzo would tease him and use him as a target for some of his pranks. Of course, once McGee gained more confidence in his abilities and could bring some of his own unique style to the table, so to speak, he’d gained the respect of his boss and Tony had become someone he could consider one of his best friends.

Over the years, Tim had noticed that Gibbs could be compassionate when he wanted to be. McGee didn’t know if it was because of his boss’ history. After all, he had had a daughter once and by all reports he had been a loving husband and father to his wife and child. Losing them had been devastating for the man. It was no surprise that the man tended to shy away from anything that represented emotional ties. Still, McGee had seen his boss treat someone in pain with incredible gentleness. 

Like Chris Richards, he thought as he drove back to Baltimore. When they’d visited her earlier that morning, McGee had watched his boss handle the woman with what could only be described as kid gloves. Maybe he had seen something in the woman; some kind of loss they had in common, perhaps. 

While they’d been waiting for the parents to arrive, McGee had done some digging on Chris. She worked in a hotel as an assistant manager, although that tended to be a misnomer, from what McGee could understand. He’d gone to the hotel to talk to the manager about the mugging Chris had reported and see if he could get some background on her. The manager on duty told him Chris’ boss was an ass who basically treated Chris like a slave, assigning her tasks which were beneath her position.

Another staff member spoke to him, telling him that Chris was the nicest person to work with who didn’t deserve the abuse she put up with from her manager and the hotel guests. 

Chris was supposed to have left the hotel the night before at eleven, but had ended up being handed a mountain of paperwork half an hour before she was due to leave, and didn’t get out until half past midnight. It was paperwork that could have been handled by someone else, according to the duty manager, but her boss obviously hadn’t cared. 

The duty manager had been extremely helpful, but apologetic when he’d told McGee that the camera in the parking lot had been down. There was, however, a CCTV camera on the other side of the parking lot that Tim learned had been working that night. The angle hadn’t been great, but it had confirmed Chris’ story. She had been attacked on the way to her car by two men, both wearing masks. Abby was now analysing the footage to see if she could find anything useful. 

Chris answered his knock after a couple of minutes. She had clearly been sleeping as she had put on a robe and her hair was mussed. She blinked at him owlishly for a few seconds.

“Agent, um …”

“McGee,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I need you to come back to NCIS headquarters. We have some questions for you.”

She bit her lip. “Uh, okay. Can you give me a few minutes to get dressed and at least look as if I haven’t just woken up?”

“Of course,” he said.

She was quiet as she sat next to him in the car on the way back in to DC. He glanced at her occasionally. She had both hands folded in her lap but continued to look out the window. He attempted to make casual conversation with her.

“How long have you lived in Baltimore?” he asked.

“All my life,” she said briefly. “How long have you been an agent?”

“Hmm, well, I’ve been with the team nearly twelve years. Before that I worked out of Norfolk.”

“Oh. Do you like being an agent?”

“It has its moments. Like every job, I guess.” He offered her a small smile. “How about you? Do you like your job?”

“It has its moments.”

“I talked to one of your co-workers. They said your boss is a bit of a hard-ass.”

She grinned suddenly. “That’s putting it mildly,” she said.

“So, how did you meet Daniel?” he asked.

“I went over to Afghanistan primarily as an aide, helping to teach some of the kids. Danny was assigned to the unit that looked after us. Well, I mean, they, uh, I guess they defended us from any attacks.”

“How long were you there?”

“About six months.”

“Before the bombing?”

She nodded, then looked out the window again, clearly not wanting to talk. McGee let it go, knowing that once they got to NCIS headquarters she would have to talk about it. He drove on in silence, nodding to the guard at the gate before driving through and parking in the secured lot. 

He walked beside Chris, making sure she was given a visitor’s pass, which was clipped on to her sweater. She followed him into the bullpen where Bishop and DiNozzo were busy giving a report to Gibbs on the hotel they’d checked out. 

“Boss,” McGee said quietly.

Gibbs looked around. Uncharacteristically, he smiled at the visitor. 

“Thank you for coming in, Ms Richards,” he said gently, another thing that struck McGee as highly unusual. Chris just nodded. Gibbs looked at him. “McGee, show her up to the conference room.”

He did so, pulling out a comfortable chair for her. Chris sat down, wincing a little.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded. “I bruised a rib, or something, when I fell.”

“Is there anything I can get you? Some coffee maybe?”

“Some water would be great,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied, turning away to pick up the carafe from the side table and pouring some water into a glass. As he turned back, he noticed Chris listlessly tracing a pattern on the dark, polished table. 

Gibbs came in quietly, sitting opposite Chris with a folder. McGee wondered if his boss was going to show her the autopsy photos, but given her state of mind, he doubted that would be advisable. 

Instead, his boss took out Daniel’s service records, which they’d obtained from his commanding officer.

“This is Daniel’s service record. Do you want to know what it says?”

She nodded, lifting the glass and taking a sip of water.

“It says that Daniel was an exemplary marine. He worked hard and was an asset to his unit. I’d like to know about the Daniel you knew.”

She lifted her head and looked at Gibbs. McGee could see tears in her eyes, or eye, rather, since the other one was badly bruised and swollen. 

“Daniel was … amazing. Smart, funny, compassionate. His unit was already there, in Afghanistan, when I arrived with one of the aid groups.”

“Why did you go?”

“I guess I wanted to do something that wasn’t about me. I … I’ve had a difficult life, I guess you could say. I mean, I never did anything really wrong. Well, I guess I did get a couple of speeding tickets, but I was completely mortified when I did.” She sighed. “Maybe it was idealistic, but I’d heard about these kids, the ones who had been orphaned by all the bombings over there and I thought that what I went through was nothing to what those kids were going through, but on some level I could at least understand.”

She smiled.

“Daniel used to play with the kids. He managed to get a soccer ball from somewhere and taught them how to play. God, he loved those kids,” she said, sighing again. 

“There was this one kid. Mashaal. The lady I worked with at the school told me his name meant ‘light’ and I could believe it. He was always smiling, always making the other kids laugh. Even though he was partly blind and he’d lost an arm in a suicide bombing. His parents died in that bombing. He was only two when that happened.”

McGee swallowed, not wanting to give away the fact that he felt a lump in his throat, hearing the story of the little boy. 

“Tell us about the bomb,” Gibbs said, still being gentle.

She again looked at him, frowning a little. She was clearly reluctant to talk about it, but Gibbs was being careful not to prod too much.

“I don’t really know what happened. Just that we were playing with Mashaal. The next thing I know, Daniel had pushed us both to the ground. There was a roar and I felt something burning my leg. I heard Danny screaming and Mashaal was crying and that was it. When I woke up again, they told me that Danny had saved my life and the doctors had put him in a coma. They flew me to Bethesda the next day. Danny wasn’t brought home until they were sure he would survive the flight.” She pressed her lips together. “You know the first thing he said when he woke up in the hospital? He asked about me and Mashaal, wanting to know if we were okay.”

McGee nodded. From what he’d heard and read in Daniel’s record, it was just the thing he would do.

Gibbs sat back, regarding Chris silently. 

“Chris, why was Daniel calling you last night?”

She looked upset. “I don’t know … I …”

McGee glanced at his boss, then interjected. 

“Chris, he tried calling you several times last night. That’s not the behaviour of a man who just wants to ‘catch up’ with you. He was worried when you didn’t show. We need to know why.”

“Chris, your friend is dead,” Gibbs reminded her. “Obviously there is something going on, something that you don’t want to tell us.”

“But I don’t know anything,” she said. She looked at them uncertainly. “Am I in trouble?”

“You could be for impeding a federal investigation.”

She chewed on her lower lip, clearly considering her options. McGee hated the thought of Gibbs coming down hard on her and he could see that his boss was gearing up to do just that. Whatever had happened, Chris was an innocent victim in all of this. The last thing McGee wanted to do was make her think that whoever had hurt her friend could come after her, but judging from the frantic calls the marine had made the night he died, it was more than likely.

From the look on the woman’s face, he could tell she was thinking the same thing. She sighed.

“Danny and I did see each other in the hospital, but we never talked about the bomb, or how we got hurt. It was just one of those things we avoided. Well, then I left the hospital and got a job as an assistant manager at the hotel, while Danny stayed in the hospital. He was discharged a month ago. 

“When he was still recovering, all he could talk about was rejoining his unit, even though we both knew that was never going to happen. Danny had burns over about eighty percent of his body. He was lucky he was able to walk. There was no way he could go back. So he accepted a job at Norfolk.

“About a week ago, he called me and asked me to go have coffee with him. My boss was being a hard ass about some paperwork, which isn’t part of my job, but he wanted me to do it anyway. I couldn’t get time off work and I was working twelve hour days. I thought the coffee thing was just Danny wanting to catch up.

“Well, then Danny started to get insistent. He called me yesterday saying he really needed to see me. He said he thought he was being followed.”

“Followed?” McGee asked.

She nodded. “He told me he saw something. Something which made him think that what happened to us in Afghanistan wasn’t an accident. Like that bomb was really meant for us.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gibbs reflects and gets a possible clue from Abby. DiNozzo and Bishop visit Norfolk.

Gibbs left the conference room as McGee continued talking to the woman. He’d known the woman was hiding something but his instincts had told him she was doing it out of fear.

Gibbs prided himself on his ability to read situations and his good instincts. Again, those instincts had told him that Chris Richards was just an innocent victim in this. As he headed down to the basement to talk to Abby, he thought about the young woman he’d just left.

Jethro Gibbs had a set of rules that he usually followed to the letter. They were rules he’d either learned as a marine, through Mike Franks, his old boss, or rules he had made up himself in the course of his work. He had broken a few of those rules - some his team knew about and some they didn’t.

While he tried to be strict with his team about adhering to those rules, he knew there were times when they needed to be bent, or ignored.

He walked in to Abby’s lab. She turned and smiled at him, that peculiar sixth sense of hers letting her know when he was about to enter. She turned back to the screen.

“So I analysed the footage from the mugging,” she said. “This wasn’t just your standard, every day mugging.”

“How so?” Gibbs asked.

“Well, for one thing, muggers generally don’t wear ski masks.”

Which was rather obvious, Gibbs thought, but he made no comment. Abby went on to explain how Chris had tried to fight them off, managing to get a good jab into the gut of one of the attackers. The footage wasn’t great, she told him, considering how far away the camera had been, but as the two men had run off when they’d been disturbed by a passing car, they had run in the direction of the camera.

One of the men had a ripped sleeve. Abby had managed to catch just a glimpse of what appeared to be a tattoo on the arm. She was going through her database of tattoos to see if she could identify it. It wasn’t going to be easy, since she had very little to go on, but it was the best they had.

Gibbs kissed her cheek. “Thanks Abs.”

He started to leave and Abby coughed.

“So, what’s she like?” she asked, nodding at the picture of the woman on her screen.

Gibbs shrugged.

“Like a woman grieving,” he said.

“That didn’t answer my question.”

What did she want him to say? He saw a young woman who had been through a painful life who was now grieving for a lost chance at happiness. A woman who didn’t deserve what had been handed to her.

“Like her, huh?”

Gibbs frowned at the forensic scientist. It wasn’t a matter of liking the woman. Yes, his instincts went against practically every rule in his book about not trusting something at face value, but something told him she was genuine. That she hadn’t exactly lied to him earlier that morning, but had reacted out of fear and shock.

Franks would probably have smacked him upside the head and reminded him of rule eight. Never take anything for granted. He didn’t think he was where the woman was concerned.

Then again, he’d been wrong before. It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last.

oo0oo

If there was one thing Ducky didn’t enjoy about his job, it was getting the grieving relatives to positively identify the body of their loved one. Especially in this case. From what he had read of the young man’s psych profile, the boy had been a good kid who hadn’t deserved to be shot in the head.

As Mr Palmer guided the older couple in, Ducky greeted them with a half-smile. It was supposed to put the relatives - the parents in this case, at ease, but he sometimes wondered if it came off rather creepy, considering he was still in scrubs.

“Mr and Mrs Watson, please allow me to convey my deepest sympathies.”

Jimmy looked sheepish as the couple frowned at him.

“Oh, this is Dr Mallard. My boss.”

Mr Watson nodded. “Dr Mallard. Thank you for your kindness. We’d like to see our son.”

“I must warn you, what you are about to see …”

Mrs Watson clutched her husband’s arm and nodded, looking tearful.

“We do understand, doctor. We would still like to see our son.”

Ducky nodded to his colleague, who adopted a serious expression as he stepped over to the drawer and opened it, pulling out the table. He slowly pulled back the sheet.

Ducky had done a fairly decent job of putting the boy’s body back together, although the skull was still a mess. Despite the way the bullet had angled down, it had still caused some collateral damage to the skull and the brain. While Ducky couldn’t say for sure, he assumed the young man would have felt only a brief flash of pain before passing out.

He observed the mother as she looked down at her son with a loving expression. She touched the boy’s cheek with a finger, stroking gently, then leaned down and kissed his forehead.

“Sweet dreams, my baby,” she said.

As composed as she seemed, Ducky could not miss the sob as she turned away, her husband’s arms wrapped around her.

“Thank you,” the man said.

Ducky nodded. He’d lived this scene many a time and knew from experience that the couple would probably go home, or to a hotel in this case, hold each other and tell each other they were fine, only to break hours or maybe even days later.

Palmer looked at him, uncharacteristically quiet, as the older couple walked away. There were papers to sign, allowing Ducky to turn the body over to the family once everything was finalised, but he decided it was something that could wait for the time being.

The younger man turned away, clearly upset.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a child,” he said finally. “I don’t think I want to ever experience that.”

Ducky nodded, understanding what his assistant meant. Palmer was a new father, still full of the novelty of his new daughter, Victoria. Ducky had never experienced fatherhood, but he had once had a younger brother who had died many years ago. He still recalled the pain of that loss, although he’d never talked about it with anyone, not even Jethro.

oo0oo

Bishop and DiNozzo had contacted the dead man’s boss at Norfolk and advised him of the man’s death. James Hardy was a civilian, a former marine who worked in the Cyber ops division at Norfolk, responsible for a team of specialists who spent their time writing code to protect classified information. It was a similar team to the one McGee had worked in before he’d joined the Major Crimes team.

As DiNozzo drove, Bishop had her head down, reading something on her phone.

“Anything interesting?”

He could see her biting her lip before she answered.

“Just trying to work out what could possibly have led someone like Daniel to believe he was being targeted.”

DiNozzo shrugged. “Who knows?” he said.

She looked up at him, her gaze searching.

“So, what did you think of the girlfriend?”

He glanced over, frowning, before turning his attention back to the road, making the turn into the base and handing his identification to the guard on duty.

“Girlfriend?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t take much notice, to be honest. She wasn’t my type.”

Bishop raised an eyebrow at him.

“Not your type? Way I hear it, every woman is your type.”

Ouch, he thought. Did he really have that much of a reputation? Sure, he had been known to flirt with women on the job, but not every woman. He certainly wasn’t going to flirt with someone who was grieving.

Bishop still looked uncertain as he stopped the car and got out. She followed him, wondering aloud if the woman was everything she seemed.

“Rule number eight, I think. Don’t take anything for granted. Or maybe it’s rule number three. Don’t believe what you’re told.”

“I thought rule number three was never be unreachable?” she asked.

“I think that was Mike Franks’ rule,” he said. “You know, it could be rule thirty-six.”

Bishop looked confused. “You think she’s playing us?”

“McSoftie doesn’t think so, but then again, like I said, he’s soft.”

She shook her head. “From what I heard, Gibbs was giving her the soft treatment. He never does that.”

That was true, Tony thought. Gibbs was known as a hard ass, not usually one to back down, or back off, whatever the case may be. Yet with the woman, he had been gentle. Kind, even.

DiNozzo had worked with Gibbs for over fourteen years and had seen him in a variety of moods. Yet around kids he had been known to show some compassion. Tony wondered if that had anything to do with his boss losing his family, especially his young daughter. Gibbs would have made a great father, he thought.

The woman, Chris, was a good few years older than Kelly Gibbs would have been if she had lived, but still almost young enough to be Gibbs’ daughter.

No, that couldn’t be it, he decided.

Bishop coughed and he looked up, quickly pulling out his badge and showing it to the woman on the front desk.

“Special agent Anthony DiNozzo, NCIS, special agent Ellie Bishop. We’re here to see Mr Hardy.”

She nodded, looking a little upset.

“Of course,” she said. “He’s expecting you.”

“Are you all right?” Bishop asked.

The woman nodded. “Danny … was a friend. We all liked him here.”

“I’m so sorry,” the blonde agent said sympathetically.

“Thank you,” she replied, unable to hold back a sob.

Hardy was a man in his early sixties with close-cropped grey hair, cut in a similar style to Gibbs. Had this been any other situation, DiNozzo would have made some remark about once a marine, always a marine, but it clearly wasn’t appropriate.

The older man looked at them, his expression stoic.

“Danny was a good kid,” he said. “Would have made a hell of a marine if it hadn’t been for that accident.”

“We have reason to believe what happened to him in Afghanistan was no accident,” Bishop replied.

The man raised a thick eyebrow. “Oh?”

“We’re still investigating,” DiNozzo told him. “Can you tell us what Daniel did here?”

“A lot of the kids who come through here aren’t jarheads like myself. Frankly, son, I’m old school. Never did like computers. But they needed someone to keep these kids in line.”

They looked through the window the former marine was pointing to at the cubicles in the outer office.

“We’re going to need to see what Daniel was working on.”

“Now hold up, missy. You can’t just come in here and just demand to see …”

Bishop visibly bristled. She clearly didn’t like being talked down to and just as clearly didn’t like being called ‘missy’. DiNozzo shot her a look before she could say something she would regret.

“Sorry, sir, but we think something Daniel was working on was the motive for his murder. We need to see what he was doing here.”

“Look, I get that, but a lot of classified intel goes through here. You can’t just …”

“We could always get a court order, sir,” DiNozzo added, making it sound like he was trying to be respectful to the man’s position when he wasn’t being the least respectful. If there was one thing he and Gibbs agreed on it was that they hated people like Hardy who used excuses like ‘classified’ and red tape to block their efforts. In many cases, it was usually because they had something to hide.

Hardy looked evenly at him. “Then you get me that court order, son,” he said. DiNozzo glared back at him. “Because I ain’t about to release classified data to a badge, no matter how much I liked the kid.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team start looking into their first suspect. The gang are still confused by Gibbs' treatment of the victim's girlfriend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a little rethink over something that happened in the last chapter. Something happened with a character which could have been confusing so the following is what I came up with to fix that. I've also come up with a couple of rules of my own. Not sure if they sound like something Gibbs would say, but it fits the situation.

Bishop thought over what had happened as they left the office. Maybe she was new to this game but she didn’t think they needed a court order. Even if it was a civilian team, surely if whatever Daniel had been working on was classified they could still go to the SecNav and get her to order the release. 

She could see DiNozzo was quietly fuming. As much as she disliked being condescended to because of her gender, he clearly hadn’t liked being called ‘son’ by a man who wasn’t old enough to be Tony’s father. 

“I’m confused,” she said as Tony drove back to the Navy Yard. He kept his eyes on the road, not even sparing her a glance.

“About?”

“Why did you tell him we’d get a court order? Couldn’t we just ask the SecNav …”

“It’s called playing dumb, Bishop.”

She looked at the senior agent, frowning. Now she was even more confused. From what she knew about her colleague, he wasn’t the type to play dumb. It didn’t make sense. Then again, the former marine’s attitude had been hostile from the start. Maybe Tony had wanted to give the man that impression so he …

“Rule number thirty, Bishop. It never hurts to let your opponent under-estimate you.”

“You think he’s a suspect,” she stated. 

“Congratulations, Bishop. We’ll make a solid agent out of you yet.”

“Okay, so if he’s a suspect, where do we start?”

“With his service record,” McGee told her after she’d related what had happened. 

He moved to sit in front of his computer, typing quickly and looking at the screen. Bishop watched for a few moments as he accessed several different departments. The cyber ops boss’ service record came up.

“What do you got?” Gibbs barked, coming in to the bullpen with a takeout cup of coffee in his hand. Bishop bit back a grin. The man practically mainlined the stuff. Then again, he worked longer and harder than anyone else.

“James Hardy, former marine,” McGee replied, moving to stand in front of the huge plasma screen where he’d projected the information. “Joined up at eighteen. Served thirty-five years, was denied promotion a few times due to several incidents of gross insubordination.”

Tony came out from behind his desk. He’d been uncharacteristically quiet as Bishop had talked to McGee.

“The guy’s a complete ass,” he put in. “He refused to give us access to whatever Daniel was working on, hiding behind red tape. I’ve already put in a call to the SecNav to get a priority override.”

“Good,” Gibbs said coolly. He was reading the former marine’s service record on the plasma and was clearly not happy. “Start checking his financial records. I want to know what this man’s got to hide.”

“Already on it, boss,” McGee told him, having gone back to his computer. He’d no sooner started working when his phone rang. “McGee. Where is she? All right, thanks.”

Bishop frowned as the agent got up again.

“Boss, that was Baltimore PD. Chris called them in what they say was a state of panic. Someone broke into her house. She’s at the local precinct now.”

Gibbs nodded, rising from his own seat. 

“You get to work on Hardy,” he said. “I’ll take care of this.”

“Uh, the officer who called is a sergeant McDonogh.”

Gibbs looked at Bishop and nodded his head toward the elevator before moving toward the doors. She followed him without a murmur. 

The drive to Baltimore was taken in utter silence. Bishop had become used to Gibbs’ taciturn manner. She knew she could be seen to be aloof, if a little odd at times, but then she tended to get totally absorbed in whatever she was working on, to the exclusion of everything else. 

She had had her clashes with Gibbs on a few occasions. The worst had been when she had received her probie eval. Bishop had got what she thought was a good score, until she learnt that both McGee and DiNozzo had scored even lower. Ducky had told her that the lower the score, the more potential Gibbs thought the agent had. 

She knew what people … staff in the office said about her. Some thought she wasn’t cut out to be an agent. There were others who thought she looked too young. She’d even heard some people saying she was nothing like Ziva or even Kate, but then, she wasn’t trying to be. Kate had been with the Secret Service, Ziva with the Mossad. When were people going to stop and think and realise that maybe she could bring something different to the table. She was trying, damn it!

Learning that her boss had scored her high on her evaluation when he’d scored her senior, male colleagues less, had made her question whether perhaps those people had been right.

An argument with Gibbs over a case had led her to confront him over the score and he’d told her the real reason he had scored her so high. He’d been going easy on her. It had caused her to wonder whether her boss didn’t think she was tough enough for the job. Hell, she’d grown up in Oklahoma. She was hardly what one would call a shrinking violet. 

Since then, Gibbs had tested her thick skin on more than one occasion. He’d made it clear she was to sink or swim and she’d done her best to meet the challenge. 

Even knowing all that, she was still a little confused over his attitude toward the woman who was apparently the victim’s girlfriend. It wasn’t like Gibbs to go out of his way to be kind to anyone without good reason and the fact that Chris Richards appeared to be innocent in all this didn’t make it so. 

Of course if the supposed break-in she’d apparently discovered when McGee had asked another agent to drive her home had anything to do with the case, Bishop might have to revise her thinking on that.

“I can hear that brain ticking from here. What’s on your mind Bishop?”

She frowned at her boss. It was unlike him to make a joke or use humour of any kind. 

“I’m just wondering about Chris Richards. Why are you … uh …”

“Spit it out, Bishop.”

“Well, we just noticed the way you were, uh, handling her, boss.”

His blue-eyed gaze was assessing, making her feel like a little girl about to be scolded by a father figure.

“Do you think I’m not capable of showing empathy?”

“No, sir, I mean, of course I don’t think that. But you think she’s innocent?”

“I didn’t say that,” he said. His poker face didn’t give anything away, but she wondered if he had already made up his mind about the woman. “Rule number sixty. You catch more flies with honey.”

She frowned at him. “That’s a Gibbs rule? I thought that was an old proverb?”

“Doesn’t make it any less true,” he said. “Or appropriate in this case.”

“Actually,” she began, knowing that it wasn’t necessarily correct, but his expression told her to shut her mouth. She wasn’t going to argue that in Gibbs’ case, that was a rule he very rarely applied, unless he was hoping by using kindness he was going to … oh, she saw where it was going. While she was sure his head was telling him one thing about Chris Richards, he clearly wasn’t hedging his bets. If the woman did have something to hide, Bishop figured Gibbs was using the soft approach hoping she might confide in them. 

Sergeant McDonogh did not look thrilled to see them. He was a uniformed officer who had clearly had one too many donuts. He was at least a hundred and fifty pounds overweight, with what Bishop would have called a beer gut. She had never been all that great at guessing ages but from his appearance she would have put him at around forty or forty-one. As he held up the case file from the examination of the scene at the house, she could see yellow stains on his fingers. She also caught a whiff of stale cigarette smoke and coughed. He shot her a glare, but said nothing.

“Think the woman’s panicking over nothing,” the sergeant claimed.

“Really?” Gibbs said coolly. He didn’t like the police sergeant at all. “Did she tell you she was part of an ongoing murder investigation?” he added, giving the man the Gibbs stare. The man wilted like a dying flower.

“Uh, she might have said … something about it,” he replied, flushing. 

Gibbs snatched the thin folder from the man’s chubby hand and flicked through it. There wasn’t much. They hadn’t found any fingerprints, other than those they assumed to be hers, but hadn’t even bothered to examine them further. He knew some of the smaller precincts had had severe cutbacks in their budgets, but there was no excuse for the sloppy casework he was seeing. 

He glanced at Bishop, who was glaring back at the sergeant, her arms folded over her chest. The girl might be still very green as an agent, but she clearly thought she was tough enough not to take any bullshit from anyone. It was one of the reasons Gibbs thought she had potential. Yes, she had messed up on occasion, and very badly, but so had he as a probie. As had McGee and DiNozzo before him. The fact was, she’d learnt from those mistakes. 

Gibbs had chosen to go easy on her for a reason, reluctant to lose yet another member of his family. Okay, so she wasn’t exactly at that point yet. She was more like a distant cousin they’d never met who had come in to the family fold without really knowing what her place was. As impatient as he could get with her sometimes, he knew he had to give her time and try not to judge her abilities against those who had gone before her. 

Chris Richards emerged from what looked to Gibbs like one of the police interview rooms. She appeared pale and more than a little frightened and confused by what had happened in just a short time. Gibbs realised it was not even five o’clock yet. A little over thirteen hours ago, Chris’ would-be boyfriend had been murdered. Now, if his instincts were right, she was now in the killer’s gunsights, so to speak. 

She walked over to them, accompanied by a female officer.

“Agent Gibbs,” she said quietly. 

“Ms Richards. I think it would be best if you remained in NCIS custody … protective custody, that is, for now.”

She nodded, clearly too exhausted and too worried to argue. 

Gibbs could see Bishop shooting him a look. It was obvious they needed to go to Chris’ home to do a sweep of the scene and make sure there was a connection to Daniel Watson’s murder and it hadn’t been just some random burglary. It could be a coincidence, Gibbs had thought but then again, he had never believed in coincidence. 

He pulled Bishop aside as the female officer spoke to Chris about something.

“Bishop, stay with her.”

“Boss?”

He didn’t want anything on the books, figuring the woman would be better protected by his team. He knew he’d be making them work through, but it was something they were used to. 

Since there was no point in going back to DC only to have to turn around and drive back to Baltimore again, he decided to drive back to Chris’ house. It wasn’t normal for him to do run-of-the-mill scene investigations, but he wasn’t leaving the woman alone and he didn’t trust the precinct cops to have done a thorough job, given their blasé attitude about the whole thing. 

Chris looked uneasy in the back of the car as he parked alongside her house.

“Why are we …” she said.

Gibbs turned and offered her a small smile that he hoped was reassuring. 

“Bishop,” he said in a clipped tone. She nodded, turning to look at Chris. The other woman’s eyes widened in alarm and distress as Gibbs pulled out his gun and Bishop did the same. 

Gibbs entered the house, quickly noting the mess which hadn’t been there that morning. This was no random burglary, he realised as he began a search. The house had been ransacked. The television, a flat-screen which was probably a couple of years old in Gibbs’ estimation, had been swept off the little table it had been standing on. It was damaged beyond repair. There were other signs which told him the person or persons who had broken in were looking for something. Drawers had been rifled through but it didn’t appear that anything valuable was taken. 

In the basement, the desktop computer had also been trashed, the tower containing the hard drive pulled apart and it was a fairly safe bet the hard drive was gone, Gibbs thought. 

Okay, so maybe he’d been wrong about the cops not doing a thorough job. Their analysis of the situation might have been poor, but there was nothing to see. The only thing they could do now was wait until the fingerprint analysis came back. 

As he turned to leave the basement, he spotted something on the wood grain veneer of the table next to the trashed tower. Frowning, he returned to check, realising there was a spot of blood on the surface, and on the tower. Whoever had pulled out the hard drive had probably cut themselves in the process. 

Gibbs took a sample of the blood and put it in a plastic baggie, intending to take it to Abby for analysis. 

The drive back to DC was equally as silent. Gibbs glanced at Chris in the rearview mirror, watching her stare out the window. She was tense, clearly still worried, but her fear seemed to have lessened a little.

Gibbs dropped Bishop and Chris at his house before heading back to the Navy Yard to drop off the blood sample to Abby’s lab. She, of course, was still there. He quietly told her it could wait until morning, then went back upstairs to the bullpen. 

McGee was still working diligently at his desk, trying to dig up everything he could find on Hardy. DiNozzo was pretending to work, but it was fairly clear he wasn’t by the guilty look on his face.

“Boss?”

He told them what he’d found at the house, ignoring their puzzled expressions and handed DiNozzo the file from Baltimore PD. From the look on his senior agent’s face, he could tell Tony wasn’t happy with the shoddy investigation work. 

The two men agreed to take the guard duty in shifts. Gibbs acknowledged the possibility he was going overboard but somehow, he didn’t think so. 

A call in to Bishop at his home and a quick stop at a drive-thru later, Gibbs arrived at his bungalow. The blonde greeted him at the door, telling him all was quiet. Chris had done little, just sitting on the lumpy couch while Bishop had kept watch at the window. 

As soon as Gibbs saw the woman, he understood why she’d been so quiet. She was fast asleep, the stress of the day having caught up with her. He left the sack of food on the table, figuring it could be heated up later.

He dismissed the probie, sending her home to her husband. He knew Jake wasn’t happy about the long hours Bishop had to work but it was something that came with the territory. 

Gibbs sat at the rickety kitchen table to read through the case notes, thinking he needed to fix it at some stage. It was like a lot of things in the house. Neglected. He hadn’t really cared about keeping things up in the house, restricting himself to the downstairs and the basement, unable to face the memories of his long dead wife and daughter. 

A sound came from the living room and he quickly got to his feet. The sound came again and he realised what it was. She was awake, sobbing. 

Gibbs wasn’t normally a demonstrative man. He might allow hugs from Abby, but other than that he tended to keep a cool distance. His agents knew he cared about them but the way he showed he cared was in the occasional head slap or barking of orders. 

Yet there was something about this woman. He wasn’t about to admit it to any of his agents but he felt an affinity with her. Maybe she hadn’t been married to Daniel, but it was fairly clear she had been in love with him and the loss was too much for her to bear. 

Moving quietly so as not to alarm her, Gibbs entered the living room. She was sitting up on the couch, her face in her hands. Bishop must have found a box of tissues somewhere as it was sitting on the table in front of the couch. Gibbs pulled a tissue and quietly held it out for her, waiting until she noticed she wasn’t alone. 

She lifted her head and took the tissue, wiping her eyes. 

“Sorry,” she said.

He shook his head, sitting on the couch next to her. Why he did what he did next he had no idea, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“I lost my wife, my daughter. They were … my world.”

“How did you get through it?”

“There are some days when I keep asking myself if I ever will get through it. The pain never really goes away Chris. Not when it’s someone you love.”

“We didn’t …”

“You loved him,” he stated. 

She sat silently, dabbing her eyes occasionally until the tissue was practically shredded. There were so many things Gibbs wanted to ask her about the case but he decided it could wait until she was calmer.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris gives them a new clue and the team uncover new suspects.

Normally DiNozzo would do anything to get out of guard duty but this time he had put his hand up without reservations. The boss would usually order him to do it anyway, but it hadn’t been necessary. 

He couldn’t help feeling bad for the woman, knowing she was going through something very painful. He’d remembered Ziva when her father had died, two years earlier. While her relationship with Eli hadn’t been the friendliest, losing him had been devastating. He knew it had been part of the reason she had left NCIS in the end. She could no longer deal with the violent nature of her job. 

Maybe with Chris Richards, it wasn’t quite the same thing, but he guessed she was grieving a lost opportunity. While she didn’t seem to be shy, per se, she had clearly been reluctant to make the first move, lacking the confidence to take that step. Now, of course, it was too late.

That was something Tony did understand. For all the bickering that had gone on between him and Ziva, there had always been something else beneath the surface. Something they had never acted on, until those weeks in the farmhouse, when he’d lied to the others about not knowing Ziva’s whereabouts. Leaving her behind had hurt, but he had cared enough about her to respect her wishes for solitude. 

Falling for Ziva had changed him. Not that he would ever admit that to McGee. God knew what his friend would say if he knew what had really happened in Israel. Tony was sure Abby suspected and he had a feeling she and Ziva still kept in touch. It was just a question of how much his former lover and co-worker had confided in the forensic scientist. Not that Abby would ever give him away. She loved him too much for that.

The creak of a board on the stairs alerted him to someone’s presence. Tony got up to investigate, conscious of Gibbs sleeping on the couch. 

Chris stared at him, clearly startled. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I …

He shook his head. “It’s okay. What are you doing up?”

“My head,” she explained, touching her forehead just above her eye. He’d had a fractured eye socket before, after a bust had gone wrong in Baltimore. They hurt like hell for several days. 

“Gibbs might have some Tylenol,” he told her.

“Thanks.”

“I’ll make some coffee,” he added, leading her into the kitchen. “By the way, name’s Tony, or DiNozzo, depending on which time of day it is.”

“I know,” she said.

He frowned at her and she looked at him with a half-smile.

“Process of elimination. I’ve met McGee and Bishop. Gibbs told me about the rest of the team and well, you don’t look like a forensic scientist.”

“Plus I’m a guy,” he said, filling the coffee pot.

She nodded. “Anyway, we’ve met. I doubt you’d remember, it was over twenty years ago. You were a cop back then.”

“In Baltimore?”

He’d forgotten she’d lived in the city all her life. He wondered how they’d met, since she appeared to be very straight-laced. A little uptight, if you ask me, he thought, although he guessed she did have a nice sense of humour, judging from the weak joke she’d made earlier. 

“I had this friend. Well, friend being a relative term, I guess. I don’t have much to do with him. I think he’s in prison anyway.”

“What happened?”

“He was busted for possession. He called me and asked me to bail him out and of course, gullible me, came down to the station and handed over the money. He promised he’d pay me back, but …”

He obviously never had, Tony thought. Typical. He was still racking his brain, trying to think when they’d met. 

She gave an awkward kind of smile.

“Uh, anyway, he was arguing with you about something and I remember you gave me this look and rolled your eyes. I …” Tony detected the beginnings of a blush. “I thought you were quite the hottie, actually.”

He vaguely remembered the incident. Chris’ ex-friend had been a real scumbag. Tony could remember looking at the young woman who had come down to the station and wondered how a girl like her could ever be tied up with a guy like her friend. Then again, he had been a cop long enough by then to know that appearances could be deceiving. 

He decided not to embarrass her further by teasing her about her remark. 

He turned to make the coffee and sat down with her at the table, giving her the painkillers.

“Thanks.” She ran her finger up and down the coffee mug, not seeming to care that it was hot. “Are you any closer to finding out who killed Danny?” she asked. 

“The boss picked up a clue in your house. I’m sure Abby will be able to match it to someone. You really cared about him, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “I guess it’s sinking in. I …” She broke off, appearing to have lost her voice, picking up the mug and taking a sip. “Sorry.”

He shook his head. “Don’t apologise for grieving,” he said. 

“Have you ever … lost someone?”

“My mom. I was just a kid. And there was someone, a couple of years ago. She didn’t die, but …”

“She left.”

“Sometimes I have trouble remembering why.”

“Do you think she’d come back if you asked her?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think yes, and sometimes no.”

Chris sighed and sipped her coffee again, her gaze distant as she became lost in her memories.

“Danny hated drugs,” she said. “I told him about that guy. He said he was glad I wasn’t friends with him. He told me people like that, they didn’t care about anyone. He went to private school in Connecticut. Parents were with the country club, that sort of thing. A lot of kids in his school were doing it and I think he said there was a guy at the country club who was selling. He knew it went on, but he wanted to stay well away from it. There was this guy in his unit …”

She trailed off, her eyes widening, a hand going to her mouth.

“What is it?” Tony prodded gently.

“I forgot,” she said in a loud whisper. “He threatened to kill Danny. It was a couple of weeks before the … before the bomb. He and Danny had an argument because Danny went to the C.O. and told him the guy was doing drugs. I thought he was doing the right thing, but the guy …”

“What’s his name?” Tony asked.

“Fisher. He’s a corporal, I think.”

Tony noted it. “We’ll check him out,” he said. “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t think of it before.”

“It’s barely been a day,” he told her comfortingly. “It’s not unknown to forget things, no matter how important they are.”

“He’s right,” Gibbs told her. Tony looked at his boss, surprised to see him. Gibbs always seemed to have a habit of sneaking up behind him. 

Chris looked at Gibbs. “I’m sorry if we woke you.”

“Light sleeper,” his boss replied. He looked at Tony, who nodded. It was time to let McGee take over anyway. He’d get Bishop and they’d go bring in Fisher. 

At least they had a firm suspect, rather than a hunch. 

It took little time to find out where the former marine was living. Alex Fisher had left the service around the same time the explosion had occurred. His C.O. had investigated Fisher’s drug use and confined him to base, suspending him from active duty until he’d completed his investigation. 

Fisher lived near Vienna, Virginia, approximately twenty miles from the Navy Yard. The house he lived in was of a similar design to Gibbs’ bungalow but in a far worse state of repair. 

With a glance at the blonde probie, DiNozzo mounted the steps, careful of the broken board and sighed at the screen door, which was half hanging off its hinges. The front door was in just as bad a shape, standing ajar. Bishop stood in the yard, waiting as Tony knocked on the door.

“NCIS,” he called out. 

He wasn’t surprised when he heard no movement from inside. 

Bishop made a sound and DiNozzo turned, just in time to see a man who had clearly just been to the market, drop a sack of groceries on the ground and take off running. Bishop began running after him, pulling out her gun.

“NCIS,” she called out. “Stop!”

Yeah, that never works, DiNozzo thought, jumping off the porch and giving chase. He quickly overtook Bishop as the man ran into the street, narrowly avoiding being hit by a car. The driver hit his brakes, beeping his horn furiously. DiNozzo shot him a look and continued the pursuit.

The man led him on a merry chase through various backyards. DiNozzo barely managed to avoid being bitten by a huge dog, still watching for his quarry. The man was clearly unfit as DiNozzo was about to close the gap when a car appeared out of nowhere and cut the suspect off. Bishop got out, pointing her gun at him. 

Clearly she had learned a few things. 

Fisher’s shoulders slumped in defeat. DiNozzo looked him over. The man was skinny as a rail, his dark hair greasy, his face marked with scars. Judging from his appearance, Tony suspected the man was still using.

The former marine was quiet in the car on the way to NCIS, not even asking what he was under arrest for. 

Within an hour they had him processed and in the interrogation room. Gibbs was already waiting. 

DiNozzo didn’t even ask whether McGee was still babysitting their witness, or why his boss was taking over the interrogation. He loved to watch Gibbs take apart a suspect. It wasn’t often that a suspect managed to survive a Gibbs interrogation unscathed. 

He stood watching through the glass in the observation room as his boss slapped down the folder and showed Fisher the photo of Daniel Watson’s dead body. The man blanched.

“Daniel Watson was shot and killed early yesterday morning. Now rumour has it you threatened to kill him.”

“What? No. No. Whoever told you that is lying.”

DiNozzo snorted. They’d confirmed it with the man’s former C.O. Daniel had reported the threat and at least one other witness had corroborated Chris’ statement. 

Fisher looked worried as Gibbs outlined his service history and informed him just how much trouble he was in. 

“Look, I … I was just blowin’ off steam, that’s all. I mean, yeah, I was mad at the guy for reporting me, but I would never … I never …”

The door to the observation room opened and Abby came in. She looked through the window at the suspect.

“Is that him?” she asked.

Tony nodded, turning back to watch. The guy was cracking under the weight of the Gibbs glare, but his instincts told him he wasn’t their guy. Besides the fact the guy was a meth head, he just didn’t seem to be that bright. 

“I talked to a guy who checked out the bomb in Afghanistan,” Abby said. “Whoever put it together knew what he was doing.”

Tony sighed. Damn it. Fisher was guilty of a lot of things, but there was no way he could have masterminded the attempt on the sergeant in Afghanistan. Or hiring a sniper to shoot Daniel Watson in the back in the dead of night. 

“He’s not our guy,” he told Gibbs, who nodded. 

“I know.”

Abby shrugged. “I did find something else though. Your blood sample. It belonged to a marine. This marine, in fact,” she said, taking the remote and putting an image up on the big screen. Eddie Copeland.

DiNozzo frowned at it. He’d seen the name in Daniel’s service record. Copeland and Daniel had been friends, yet it now seemed as if Copeland had been involved with Daniel’s murder. 

McGee reported for duty, telling Gibbs that Bishop had taken over guard duty. She had taken a laptop with her so she could analyse all the evidence they had thus far. Without being asked, McGee told Gibbs that Chris seemed to be coping well. 

DiNozzo knew from experience she wasn’t coping at all. She was trying to be strong in front of them, but he figured it wouldn’t be long before she completely lost it. 

McGee went with Gibbs to bring in the new suspect. Meanwhile, DiNozzo had received word from the SecNav’s office that he had his override on the so-called ‘classified’ material Daniel had been working on prior to his death. Since he was in charge when Gibbs wasn’t around, he grabbed another agent to accompany him to Norfolk. 

Hardy blustered and still tried to block them, but DiNozzo waved the document giving him clearance.

“Unless you want to be arrested for impeding a federal investigation,” DiNozzo told him, “I’d sit down and shut up.”

“I’ll have your badge for this,” the older man hissed.

DiNozzo smirked at him. “I’d like to see you try. Don’t go far,” he advised.

“Are you saying I’m a suspect now?” he asked.

“That depends on what our geek squad finds on this computer,” he replied. 

Hardy grumbled but didn’t try to stop them any further. They were able to take the computer without any further protests.

By the time he had returned and left the computer with Abby and McGeek to analyse, Gibbs had the new suspect in interrogation. 

This one seemed to be a tougher nut to crack. He was clearly one of those ‘be all you can be’ marines. Semper Fi, and all that. He reminded DiNozzo a little of a John Wayne type character from any one of his movies, or perhaps Clint Eastwood in a western, chewing on a toothpick. Maybe something like The Outlaw Josey Wales. 

Gibbs had him on the ropes though. He’d already informed the marine he had proof the man had broken into Chris’ home the day before and stolen her hard drive. 

Abby came in again. DiNozzo frowned at her.

“Second time in, what, three hours?”

“You know those guys that attacked Chris the night Daniel was murdered?”

“What about them?”

“Well, on a hunch, I re-rendered the still of the guy with the tattoo and matched it up with our suspect. Take a look.”

She handed him a printout. There were two photos. One of the still taken from the attack and of the suspect’s arm. Or more specifically of his tattoo. It matched. Abby explained the process of how she had re-rendered the image taking into account the movement of the attacker’s muscles and how it would affect the tattoo. DiNozzo tuned out, taking the printout to his boss. 

Gibbs smirked at Copeland and showed him the image.

“You attacked Chris Richards the night Daniel Watson was murdered.” 

“I need a lawyer,” Copeland replied, refusing to say any more.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth begins to come out but the team still have to figure out who pulled the trigger.

Bishop had spent the day working on the laptop while guarding Chris at Gibbs’ place. The older woman had been curled up on the couch most of the day either watching television or napping. She had called her boss earlier, using a phone McGee had clearly given her. Bishop had only half heard the conversation but gathered it hadn’t gone well. It had sounded as if the woman’s boss had fired her for refusing to come in. Well, it wasn’t exactly that she had refused, since Gibbs had told her she wasn’t to go anywhere without an agent. 

Bishop chewed on a nail, glancing into the living room where Chris had curled into the corner, practically in a ball, hugging her knees with her feet up on the couch. From what she had learned about the woman so far, Chris Richards had never done anything wrong, except for a couple of speeding tickets, and everyone did that. She didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs and from all reports had never even jaywalked for fear of getting a ticket. 

That was what was wrong with her, the analyst thought. She was too perfect. 

The front door closed quietly and Bishop tensed. Gibbs had a habit of leaving the door unlocked, even when he left the house to go to work. It wasn’t really as if he had anything to steal, other than the tools he had downstairs when he was working on his boats, or whatever project he had going on. It still didn’t make sense to her. 

Gibbs came in, holding a brown paper sack which Bishop guessed contained yet another takeout. There was a spot of grease on the paper. 

“She said anything else?” he asked, nodding his head toward the living room. 

Bishop shook her head, pondering whether she should talk to Gibbs about her misgivings on the woman.

“Something on your mind, Bishop?”

Now was probably not the best time to do it, she decided. 

“Uh no. Guess not.”

“Take a break. I’ll stick around for a while.”

That was the crux of the matter, she thought as she drove back to headquarters to work on her analysis. Everyone, even Gibbs, was so busy feeling sorry for the woman, she had to wonder if they were not seeing something, or if she was perhaps putting doubt where there was no need. 

McGee was working on his computer in the bullpen when she returned. 

“Something on your mind, Bishop?”

She sighed. McGee had clearly been working for Gibbs too long if he was echoing the boss’ own words. 

“Uh, I don’t know. Do you think, maybe, Chris is too perfect?”

McGee frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s like she’s never done anything wrong. Not really. I mean, everything I’ve learned about her, she seems like a nice enough woman, but it’s like nothing stands out about her except that she’s too nice.”

Her colleague nodded sagely. 

“I think I know what you’re getting at. It’s like she’s a Mary Sue.”

“A what?”

“It’s a term that has been around for years. It actually started in a Star Trek fanfiction back in the seventies with a character named Mary Sue. It was supposed to be a parody, but it’s come to mean any character that seems to have no flaws. Sort of like an idealised version of the writer.”

Bishop suppressed a smirk. She’d heard all about McGee’s ‘other career’ as a writer and the characters he’d created which were clearly loosely based on his co-workers. DiNozzo still called him McGeek sometimes and it was a title which seemed to suit the computer specialist. 

“So you agree that she seems …”

“I think it’s natural to try to look beyond the surface, but where Chris is concerned, I don’t think she’s a Mary Sue. She’s had her problems. She ran away from home when she was sixteen,” he said, showing her a file.

Bishop read it. Chris had run away when her parents had refused to believe a family friend had been molesting her. She’d lived on the streets while working at a local bakery to put herself through school. Her boss had found out about her homeless situation and got her into a shelter. 

While at the shelter, she had met a young man who had been a drug addict and they’d become friends. Until the young man had ended up in prison. 

“Agent McGee?”

McGee looked around and stared at the older man.

“Mr Watson?”

“I wondered if I could have a moment of your time,” he said.

Bishop bit her lip, but sat down at her desk, watching as McGee left with the dead marine’s father. 

McGee led the man to the conference room.

“How can I help you sir?”

“Have you made any progress on who killed him?” Jack Watson asked.

“Not yet, sir. We do have a suspect in custody and he’s being questioned …”

The older man sighed. “I hoped … Look, my wife likes to think the sun shone out of our son, but Danny wasn’t perfect.”

“In what way, sir?”

“When he was a teenager, he got himself into some trouble. Started hanging around with the wrong crowd. He was arrested once but the arresting officer was a friend of the family and I asked him not to press charges. Maybe that was wrong, but I …”

He went to stand at the window, staring down at the street.

“I couldn’t sleep a wink last night, thinking about it. Thinking about my son and that poor woman. What she’s lost. What we’ve all lost.” He turned and looked at McGee for a moment, his expression unreadable, then turned away again, leaning with one hand on the window frame. 

“You do your best for your kids, you know? Try to protect them from the worst. Danny was luckier than most kids. We’re fairly well off, considering. Private school, country club. Guess even that can’t keep your kids from getting into things they shouldn’t.” He sighed heavily. 

“I tried to protect his mother from it. She’d only get upset. You see, Danny’s best friend died of an overdose, right in front of him. The kid was a mess. Getting arrested was kind of the last straw. I told him he had to shape up or ship out. Gave him a choice. Either try to make it on his own, without our help, or join the marines.”

“He chose the marines?” McGee asked.

“Guess watching his best friend die really shook him up. He took to being a marine like a duck takes to water. Really turned his life around. He told me there was a kid doing all kinds of drugs in his unit. Figured he should report it to his C.O. Last thing he wanted was for another kid to end up like his buddy.”

McGee could understand that. Still, that didn’t alter the fact that they still had no idea who was behind Daniel’s murder. Maybe Abby could come up with something, he thought, escorting the father out.

Abby greeted him in her usual bubbly way. She’d already analysed Daniel’s computer.

“He tried to cover his activity, but I pinged off the server and it looked like Big Brother was watching.”

“What was he doing?” McGee asked.

He watched as Abby brought up files of children from the same area where Daniel had been based. 

“Kids?”

She nodded. “He was trying to track them. Especially this one.”

McGee frowned at the image of a boy smiling at the camera. He had a scar on one side of his face and one arm appeared to have been cut off just below the shoulder. 

“Mashaal,” he said softly. “Did Daniel find him?”

Abby shrugged. “I don’t know. But he did find another one. In a training camp.” She brought up an image of a five-year-old boy.

“A training camp? The kid’s five years old!”

McGee asked Abby for a copy of the file, returning back upstairs to find everyone else in the bullpen, including Chris.

“I was going a little stir-crazy,” she admitted with a sad smile. 

McGee bit his lip. He hadn’t really wanted to relate everything he’d learnt in front of her, but he supposed it was better her finding out the truth about her friend from them than someone else. 

She looked completely shocked when she heard about Daniel’s difficult teenage years.

“He never really wanted to talk about it,” she said quietly. She sighed. “I guess I can’t blame him. I never really talked about my childhood.” She looked at Gibbs. “Do you think that has something to do with why he was killed?”

“No,” McGee replied. “Something more. Abby found something in Daniel’s computer at his work. Do you remember the little boy at the camp?”

Chris nodded. “After I woke up in the hospital, I tried to find out what happened to Mashaal, but I didn’t know who I could talk to and Danny’s C.O. told me Mashaal had left the camp with an uncle.” She frowned. “At least I presume he was his uncle.”

“What do you mean?” Gibbs asked.

“Sometimes Mashaal liked to listen to me read to some of the children. We had a few books, mostly Dr Seuss, but the kids seemed to enjoy it. One afternoon Mashaal was there as normal and this guy … he must have been my age or a bit older, came in and tried to drag Mashaal away. Mashaal just screamed at him in Arabic. Danny later told me the guy was apparently Mashaal’s uncle and he didn’t like the fact I was trying to teach the kids English. I don’t know if it was because I was a woman or whether it was something else.”

McGee remembered a similar incident years ago when a marine had been helping in a school and one of the teachers had been part of a group which had then taken the marine hostage. 

He turned to the monitor and brought up images of children.

“It seemed Daniel suspected something was up. He was searching for these children and we believe he may have actually succeeded. These children were sent to training camps.”

“Training camps?” Chris paled. “You mean, to fight? But … they’re only children.”

“It’s an unfortunate problem in Afghanistan,” Bishop explained gently. “Children are taken from their homes and placed in these camps, taught to fight. I’ve heard of some children as young as six-years-old being taught to become soldiers.”

“Why?” Chris sounded tearful. “Children should be allowed to be children.”

That wasn’t the only fate for the children, McGee had learned. There had been a few young girls at the camp who had also disappeared. Daniel had discovered the fates of at least two of them. Tim was reluctant to reveal this information. He’d always been horrified at the stories he’d heard but to have it shown in black and white, so to speak … Chris had clearly loved working with the children and he knew she would be equally horrified and disgusted.

“McGee, what are you not telling us?”

“Boss, I … I’d rather not …”

Chris looked at him. “Tim, I can handle it.”

“You can’t handle this. Daniel wasn’t just looking for the boys. He found two little girls. One of them … one of them is dead.”

From the way Chris turned ghostly white, he knew she understood.

“Oh, God. No!”

“It’s still no closer to giving us a motive.”

“Au contraire, boss,” DiNozzo piped up. “I talked some more with Copeland." The marine hadn't given away much but Tony explained he'd played a hunch and tripped up the marine. "We think someone was running a scam. Selling information about the kids that came in to the camp. The guy that claimed to be Mashaal’s ‘uncle’ may have been the broker.”

He slowly outlined what they thought had happened. One or more of the marines had been paid for information not only about the children, but also on how and when the children could be smuggled out of the camp.

“That’s not all we found, boss,” Bishop spoke up. “Daniel’s boss recently received a hefty deposit in his bank account.”

“For what?” Chris asked.

“I think that’s a question we should be asking him,” Gibbs told her. 

The former marine was not exactly impressed at being dragged down to NCIS headquarters and led to the interrogation room. Gibbs slapped down the folder containing Daniel’s autopsy photo and report. 

Hardy stared at him, then down at the report. His expression hardened. 

“If you’re here to accuse me of … like I told those two idiots you sent, I liked the kid.”

Gibbs knew both DiNozzo and Bishop would be bristling at the ‘idiot’ comment but thankfully he’d kept them out of this part of the process. 

“That may be,” Gibbs said quietly, “but you’re still involved. Tell me about the money.”

A startled look crossed the other man’s face for just a second before it turned as hard as before. It was already too late for a denial, however.

“What money?” Hardy asked after a long moment.

“Don’t bother,” Gibbs told him. “We know about the $50,000 deposit. We’re still tracking the source of the deposit.”

“I don’t know anything about any money,” Hardy insisted. “And I had nothing to do with what happened to the kid.”

“Really? Tell me, is it standard procedure to monitor your staff activity by piggy backing off their computer?” Gibbs asked, uncertain if he was using the right terminology. He knew more about woodcraft than he did about computers and still used the same model cellphone he’d began using ten years earlier. He had tried using a smartphone but it seemed to him the phone couldn’t be that smart if he couldn’t figure out how to use it. 

“It’s my job!” was all Hardy would say. 

McGee knocked on the door and opened it. Gibbs usually didn’t like being interrupted in an interrogation, but he’d been hoping the computer specialist had been able to dig up something which could force Hardy into talking. 

He rose and left the room. McGee had a print out in his hand.

“Boss, we analysed Hardy’s communications and we found a couple of emails you should see.”

Gibbs took the printout and read the email, then smirked, returning to the interrogation, ready to rip into the guy. Daniel had been tracking someone who knew about the scheme to sell the kids off to various militia groups, in the case of the boys, and the girls to prospective husbands. Hardy had clearly found out about it by monitoring Daniel’s computer and had taken advantage of it by demanding money from the perpetrator.

“Blackmail?” He shook his head. Clearly Hardy hadn’t been thinking with his right brain if he was blackmailing those involved in the scam. 

Hardy was unrepentant, clearly knowing the game was up.

“You know what I got when I retired from the marines? Nothing except a piece of shrapnel in my chest and a hunk of metal. I’m broke, Gibbs. So what if I wanted a little nest egg?”

“Nest egg? A kid is dead because you wanted a nest egg. Do you really think the people you blackmailed are gonna just walk away? They’ve already committed one murder. You think they’ll leave you alone?”

Gibbs held his temper, even when a big part of him wanted to rip this man apart. He wanted to arrest him for being an accessory to murder, but he’d still have to prove intent. The man was clearly an opportunist, but there was no proof he’d actually intended for Daniel to be murdered. 

Disgusted, Gibbs walked out, leaving Hardy to think about what he’d done. For a man who had been a marine, he showed absolutely no loyalty to the Corps. 

Chris had clearly been crying when she stepped out of the observation room with Leon Vance. She’d insisted on watching the interrogation, although Gibbs hadn’t thought it was a good idea, so Gibbs had asked Vance to stay with her. If there was one person who could understand what she was going through, it was Vance. It had been two years since Leon had lost his wife and the pain of that loss was still very raw for the director. 

Gibbs could tell from his friend’s expression that the man was absolutely livid. They’d both seen a lot of crime in their tenure at NCIS but the one thing that Leon Vance had never been able to handle was abuse of children. Gibbs was the same. Maybe that was a weak spot where he was concerned, but he didn’t care. 

The one thing that did separate him and Vance was the fact that Vance was a better politician than Gibbs. He knew how to talk the talk, which was what made him more qualified to be the director of NCIS. Even Tom Morrow had once told Gibbs he just didn’t have what it took to be the director of the agency and Gibbs accepted that. He preferred being in the field anyway, even if he was getting close to mandatory retirement age. 

“So what happens now?” Chris asked, glancing down the corridor to the interrogation room.

“He’ll be taken to the detention facility, but he’ll very likely be out on bail before long. We can’t prove he had any knowledge of the plan to kill Daniel.”

“Why did he do it?”

“Greed,” Vance replied. “Plain and simple.”

Gibbs disagreed with that, but he wasn’t about to say so to his boss.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gibbs' house is the centre of an attempt on Chris and the truth comes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not entirely satisfied with the way this played out, but I wanted a way to lead this in to the case that leads up to the season 12 finale. Also, I'm not entirely happy with Gibbs' p.o.v. either, but he still strikes me as a man with deep compassion, especially for children, that he keeps well hidden, even from his 'family'.

While it was obvious Copeland had been involved in the scam, it wasn’t clear just how much he had to do with Daniel’s death. DiNozzo had questioned him at length, with the JAG lawyer present, but the marine had refused to admit his own culpability. He had also refused to tell them who else had been involved.

They had seized the marine’s personal computer, his tablet and his smartphone to see if Abby or McGee could track any communication between Copeland and his fellow conspirators. Unlike Hardy, however, the younger marine had been at least smart about it. If he had used any kind of electronic device to communicate with the others, he’d either disposed of it or hidden it very well. 

The unit’s C.O had acted shocked when DiNozzo had informed him exactly what some of his marines were up to and how it figured into Daniel’s murder. That, of course, was no real indication that the man was innocent. DiNozzo had learned a long time ago never to take anything at face value. 

The senior agent had picked up some of the files, intending to study them while he took overnight guard duty once again. He was sure there was something they were missing. Usually when that happened they went back to square one and started over. Hence the reading material. 

All was quiet at Gibbs’ bungalow. Chris had gone to bed and appeared to be sleeping, if not soundly, then at least reasonably well, considering the circumstances. Gibbs was also sleeping on the couch until it was his turn to take over. 

The senior agent’s eyes were starting to get that fuzziness from lack of sleep. He shuffled the papers and blinked a few times, then figured he should get up and make some coffee. Just as he did so, he heard creaking sounds from upstairs. 

Gibbs’ phone rang, its tone a discordant sound in the still night. It was abruptly cut off and Tony heard his boss speaking quietly. There was another sound from upstairs, this time as if furniture was shifted, like someone had walked into something. Tony frowned. Chris knew where the bathroom was and there hadn’t been a lot of furniture in the room where she was sleeping.

Something was not right, he told himself. Just as he made up his mind to go upstairs and investigate, the lights went out.

“DiNozzo!” Gibbs called. 

He removed his gun from his holster and made his way up the stairs quickly. As he reached the landing, there was the sound of a shot and a flash in the darkness. Tony flattened himself against the wall as best he could. 

It was too dark to see anything and the last thing he wanted was for Chris to get hit in any kind of crossfire.

“Federal agent!” he called out, only to receive a volley of shots in reply. 

From his estimation there were at least two shooters, given the slightly different angles of the shots. Bullets thudded into the door at the end of the hall. The bedroom Chris was in was a few steps from the landing, but right in the middle of the line of fire. 

Tony heard Gibbs running up the stairs behind him. He turned to look at his boss for a second as the older man tossed him a flashlight. DiNozzo shone the light in the direction of the shots, getting a glimpse of combat boots. Figures, he thought. Anyone with the balls to shoot an unarmed man in the back would have no qualms about breaking in to the house of a federal agent to take out their only witness. 

They had clearly not studied the layout of the house and broken in through the back bedroom. The assault had been obviously unplanned, or perhaps planned in a hurry. 

DiNozzo glanced at his boss, who had flattened himself against the opposite wall, using another flashlight to try to get a handle on the situation. Tony could only pray that Chris was still in the room and, hearing the commotion, had been smart enough to stay put, or take cover. Then again, she had been in a camp near a combat zone in Afghanistan. Surely they would have taught the aid workers about combat situations. 

More shots were fired. Tony heard Gibbs firing beside him and the thud of someone falling. He aimed the flashlight, holding it with his left hand above his right, aiming his handgun in the same direction. The one remaining shooter again fired and Tony fired back, hearing the man swearing in Arabic. It was a similar phrase to one Ziva would sometimes use when she was pissed off. 

“Drop your weapon!” Gibbs shouted, then spoke the same phrase in Arabic. 

Clearly the man was desperate as he again shot, giving them both a clear indication of his position. Both men fired and the shooter was down. 

Moving cautiously, handguns still drawn, Gibbs and DiNozzo approached the fallen men. The second shooter was dead. Tony wasn’t sure who had got off the shot, but assumed it was Gibbs, who had once been a sniper. The bullet had hit him practically right between the eyes. 

The other man was hit in his torso, just below his ribcage. He was conscious, but just barely, blood staining his flak jacket. 

Gibbs looked at Tony, who nodded and immediately got on the phone to call an ambulance. His boss opened the door to Chris’ room. From what Tony could tell, the woman had at least been taught to take cover as it took a few moments for Gibbs to convince her it was over. When she emerged, she was clearly in shock. Gibbs wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led the shaking woman downstairs. 

The neighbours, it seemed, had little better to do, even in the middle of the night, as they were watching as the shot man was taken to hospital in an ambulance. The police had been called and it wasn’t long before Vance also showed up. 

“You wanna tell me what happened here, Gibbs?” he asked.

“Yeah. Two guys shot up my place. What do you think happened, Leon?”

Vance snorted at Gibbs’ sarcasm, glancing at Chris, who was sitting with Bishop, drinking strong tea. She’d refused a glass of Gibbs’ bourbon.

“Who were they?” the director asked.

“Don’t know,” DiNozzo replied. “Dead guy wasn’t carrying any i.d. on him and other guy won’t be talking for at least a few hours.”

McGee approached them with a phone in his hand. 

“That was Abby,” he told Gibbs. “She says the bullet that killed Hardy was from the same gun that was used to kill Daniel Watson.”

DiNozzo frowned at his friend. “Wait. What?”

Gibbs quickly explained that the phone call he’d received just as the attack was going down was to tell him that Hardy had been shot as he’d been on his way home after being released on bail. 

“Idiot!” DiNozzo muttered. While the man hadn’t deserved to have been murdered, DiNozzo was still annoyed at how it had gone down.

Despite how early it was, Gibbs went back to the Navy Yard, planning on recalling Copeland from the lock-up. He had some more questions for him. 

Unwilling to leave Chris alone, given what she had been through that night, Gibbs asked for a volunteer to keep her company. Abby was quick to put her hand up, letting him know that Chris was welcome to sleep on the couch in her lab. He smiled. He’d known the forensic scientist a long time and while her openness and big heart could get her in trouble sometimes, he had never met a more compassionate person. 

He made sure Chris was happy enough. As he was leaving he heard the two women debating their various music choices. While Abby was a hard rock fan, from the way Chris was arguing, she was more a soft rock fan. With a grin, Gibbs returned upstairs, getting himself a coffee on the way up.

Bishop, McGee and DiNozzo were all waiting, looking bleary-eyed, gathered around the big screen.

“Talk to me,” he said, striding purposefully into the bullpen.

DiNozzo had the remote in his hand and immediately began talking. 

“Our dead guy is Hafid Samara. A contact in Afghanistan says he’s a member of an extremist group which claimed credit last year for a number of bombings of American military installations.”

Bishop took the remote.

“Samara’s brother runs a number of training camps in Afghanistan although we haven’t been able to track them. Last year a reporter with the BBC began investigating the training camps but he was killed in a bombing before he could release his findings. What he did claim, although it was never proven, was that the children in these camps had been either sold by their families or kidnapped.”

Gibbs nodded. The picture was becoming clearer. The extremist group had used a go-between, conspiring to take the children from the school Chris had been working with and forcing them to train to become soldiers. Some of these extremist groups were all the same, he thought. They would shout and proclaim western culture - or at least American culture - to be the root of all evil, but it was a different story when they needed something, like weapons. 

Word came through security that Copeland was back in Interrogation. Gibbs sat down, eyeing the marine and the JAG lawyer. It was clear Copeland had re-thought his situation judging from the glances exchanged between the marine and the lawyer. 

“Why did you attack Chris Richards?” he asked.

Something had been bothering him. He’d asked Abby to show him the footage and while he hadn’t been able to see much, he had seen enough to realise something was not right about that attack.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Copeland admitted, his head bowed. “But they made me. They wanted to know what she knew. I liked her. She’s a nice lady, and Danny … I think he was too shy to tell her he liked her, but he did talk about maybe asking her out when they got back to the States.”

“What she knew about what?”

“Nazeem … he was the guy who set the whole thing up. Promised us a lot of money if we’d help him get the kids. He said she was getting too close to that little kid. The one with one arm. He thought the kid had told her Nazeem had tried to force him away from the school.”

“Where is Nazeem now?”

“I don’t know sir.”

“How many of the men were involved?”

The JAG lawyer put a hand on Copeland’s arm but he shook him off.

“Six of us, sir.”

“Who set the bomb?”

“Nazeem. Danny … Danny must have seen it, realised … We were supposed to use the commotion to smuggle some of the kids out. When Danny went down, Nazeem grabbed the kid.” 

Gibbs could see tears running down the marine’s face.

“I never should have got involved but I needed the money. My dad got sick with cancer. He needed treatment but the insurance wouldn’t cover it. I just wanted to help my dad. Danny …” He swallowed hard. “Danny was my friend, Agent Gibbs.”

“Who shot Danny, Copeland?”

“I don’t know sir. I wish I knew because I’d like to kill the man who did it.”

“What happened with Chris that night?” he asked.

“She fought back. I was kind of surprised because she didn’t seem like someone who would fight back. We were just supposed to get her keys and her phone and then her computer. She wasn’t supposed to get hurt. I swear, Agent Gibbs.”

“But she did get hurt,” he pointed out. 

“Not by me,” Copeland insisted. “I don’t like hitting women, sir. I didn’t even like fighting the female recruits in combat training, sir.”

Gibbs had heard enough to know the young man was telling the truth. He asked for all the names of the men involved, including the other man who had been with Copeland the night of the attack.

When he did get the other man in, it was fairly clear he was the one who had fractured Chris’ eye socket. It was not only in the physical evidence of the bruised fist, it was also in his record. He had a history of violent altercations with women. 

When they were done interviewing every one of the marines involved, it was fairly clear they had had nothing to do with Daniel’s death, but in an effort to protect themselves, they had refused to own up to their own part in the conspiracy. 

Hardy’s death was a different matter. He’d learned through Daniel’s research the name of one of the conspirators and had chosen to use that information to blackmail them. Then that person had mentioned it to Nazeem, the broker, who had contacted Samara. As Gibbs suspected, Samara was a trained sniper.

An interview with the dead man’s partner in the hospital yielded another lead. This time to an apartment building in Baltimore. Gibbs went with his team, forcing their way in to the apartment. Maybe it was out of sheer luck but the man who had brokered the deal and caused the deaths of two people had been working there, communicating with someone over a video link. 

The man glared at Gibbs in interrogation.

“You can prove nothing,” he said in a cold tone. 

“Your man Samara is dead and we can prove he killed Daniel Watson. We found where he was staying and the weapon he used to kill both Gunnery Sergeant Watson and James Hardy.” He returned the glare with an icy cold gaze. “Our forensics specialist is going over your computer with a fine-toothed comb. Trust me, she’ll find it.”

Nazeem snorted. “A woman.”

“A woman who happens to be brilliant at what she does.”

The man muttered something in Arabic which Gibbs took to be some kind of nonsense about women doing men’s work. Gibbs might be old school, but he was well aware, having worked with a few very brilliant and hard-working women, that women could do just as good a job. 

He continued the interview but it was fairly clear Nazeem wasn’t going to give in. Not even the threat of being sent to a maximum security facility designed for people connected with terrorism was enough to make him talk. 

He was smug as he stared at Gibbs.

“You think this ends with me? I am, as you Americans say, but a small fish in a very big pond. This will not stop.”

Gibbs glowered at him with disgust. “You think it’s okay to train kids to be killers. To send little girls to child rapists. They’re not children to you, are they? They’re commodities.”

Nazeem spat at him. “You Americans with your ideas. You know nothing about our world yet you come and think you can tell us how to live. Teach in our schools.” He went on and on about the school, making his opinion clear on the subject.

Gibbs shook his head. God forbid the children should be allowed to think for themselves, learn about other worlds and know that there was a place that valued them for the individuality rather than expected them to accept the status quo. 

He left the interrogation in disgust, happy that at least the murder had been solved, but the case itself was not completely resolved. Nazeem was right about one thing. It didn’t end with him. His scheme was only a small part of the entire conspiracy. Somewhere out there, someone was recruiting children and training them to become soldiers in their war against the west. It was just a matter of time before Gibbs found out who.

The squad room was busy when he walked back in. Gibbs sat down at his desk, glancing over at each desk of his team, watching them as they typed on their keyboards. 

Later that night, Gibbs worked in his basement, repairing some of the woodwork that had been damaged in the assault earlier that morning. He heard the front door open and listened for the footsteps as the visitor came down the stairs. 

Chris stood hesitantly, clearly waiting for his invitation to come down. He smiled at her.

“Where did you come from?” he asked.

“Abby. She's outside. I …”

He picked up the bottle of bourbon but she shook her head. 

“No. Thank you though,” she said with a little smile. “I … uh, Jack and Belle … she told me to call her Belle … they invited me to go to Connecticut with them. For the funeral. Jack says the country club has an opening for a manager and he thought the job might suit me.”

“You gonna go?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Good.”

“Gibbs, I just … I wanted to thank you. I mean, I know it’s your job and everything, but the way you … I mean, I …”

“You’re welcome,” he said, knowing what she meant. Maybe they hadn’t been able to save her from the grief of losing the only man she’d probably ever loved, but she had the truth, and that was the only thing that really mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I admit it. I'm not entirely happy with it. A few things I wanted to say. 
> 
> One, Tony and Ziva. Yes, I do mention this a little bit because even after Tony's send-off, I do see a bit of foreshadowing in season 11. Tony changed. Yes, he could still be obnoxious but for a while there he was more serious and I think that had everything to do with what happened between him and Ziva, so the little bit of analysing he does in the story is my interpretation of why he changed. 
> 
> Two: I wanted this to fit in with the season canon, especially the season finale, so the plot is just one part of the big picture. Hence: Conspiracy. 
> 
> Three: I tried not to make the original character too 'perfect' and I admit to playing with the whole 'Mary Sue' concept, hence Bishop's p.o.v and McGee's take on it. I deliberately stayed away from writing her p.o.v. for that reason, but I do think there are people like her out there. Yes, she is a bit of a goody-two-shoes, but so what? 
> 
> Four: Gibbs. I find it hard to believe a man who is still in love with his first wife and has never really let her or his daughter go, is a man so hardened by what he sees that he has no compassion, so that's why I wrote him being so kind to Chris.


End file.
